Cuthbert Staunton took Guy up to London to the house in Kensington to be
inspected by a well-known doctor, who was also a personal friend of his
own.
Guy despatched his petulant little note to his aunt before he started,
and, perhaps, it was edged by his own discomfort, for he could hardly
endure to be the subject of discussion and inquiry, and, the immediate
effect of the night at Waynflete having passed off, held himself with
difficulty to his resolution.
"You may trust me to tell him nothing against your wish," said Staunton,
beforehand.
"I don't think you could tell him much," said Guy, oddly. "But," he
added, "I wish to tell him that I am afraid of the brandy."
The man of science, when told that he suffered from palpitations and
exhaustion after any "nervous strain," the expression substituted by
Cuthbert for Guy's straightforward "when I am frightened," and also of
this means of remedy, made due examination of him, and asked various
questions, eliciting that he was easily tired, and that his heart did
throb sometimes after over-fatigue or over-hurry, "but not to signify at
all, that didn't matter."
And could he foretell when periods of nervous excitement were likely to
occur, so as to avoid them?
"No," said Guy; and then he added, while his lips grew a little white,
"I want to be told how to deal with the effects of it so that the remedy
mayn't be worse than the thing itself. No one can help me as to the
cause."
"Ah!" said the doctor, thoughtfully. Then he gave various directions as
to avoiding fatigue, worry, or excitement. A winter abroad would be
good, change of scene and occupation. There was no serious mischief at
work at present; but there was need of great care and consideration.
And with a gravity showing that he understood one part of the matter,
severe restrictions were laid on the use of brandy and everything
analogous to it, and other prescriptions substituted. "Mr Waynflete
mustn't be alarmed about himself; care for a year or two would make all
the difference. He would grow stronger, and the nervous strain would
lessen in proportion."
Guy looked back at him, but said nothing; and as he took leave, Cuthbert
remained for a minute or two.
"That young fellow is a good deal out of health," said the doctor.
"Hasn't he a mother or any one to look after him?"
"Not a soul capable, except me," said Staunton. "I'm going to do it as
well as I can, and he will let me."
"Well, remember this: whether he can avoid nervous shocks or no, _he
must not have them_. And he can't be too much afraid of the brandy.
Get him out of whatever oppresses him. It's the only plan. The heart
is weak, and the brain--excitable."
"Should you like a spell abroad?" said Staunton, as they sat at luncheon
at his club.
"I could not go," said Guy. "That would mean giving up having any
concern with the business. And I haven't enough money."
"But if Mrs Waynflete knew that it was a matter of health--You must
really let your friends know that you have to be careful."
It was a new idea to Guy that the effects of his attacks were of
importance in themselves, and naturally an unwelcome one. He looked
rather obstinate, and went on eating his salad. After a minute or two,
he said--
"I will do what I come to think is right. No one else can quite know."
"No; but don't you see, my dear boy, that whatever strengthens your
constitution altogether will help you to--to--contend with your
trouble--and make it less likely to attack you?"
"Yes," said Guy, slowly. "What other people say does help one to
think."
"Well, there's no hurry to decide," said Cuthbert. "You still think you
would like to go down to-night? Certainly, there isn't much on at
present here. What shall we do this afternoon?"
A friend of Staunton's here turned up and pressed on their acceptance
some tickets for a morning performance of Hamlet, in which he was
interested.
"Should you like to go, Guy?" said Cuthbert; "there would be plenty of
time to dine afterwards, and get our train."
Guy thought that he would like it, and it was not till they were sitting
in the stalls that it struck his friend that Hamlet was not calculated
to divert his mind from the subject that engrossed it. Still, it must
be familiar to him.
But Cuthbert failed to realise that, though Guy believed himself to have
"read Shakespeare," it is possible for a country-bred youth, brought up
in an unliterary and non-play-going family, to bring an extremely fresh
interest to bear on our great dramatist, and though Guy was not quite in
the condition of the lady who, in the middle of the murder scene in
Macbeth, observed tearfully to her friend, "Oh dear, I am afraid this
cannot end well!" he was but dimly prepared for what he was going to
see. He gave an odd little laugh as the ghost crossed the stage, but
watched intently and quietly.
"What do you think of it?" said Cuthbert, in a pause. "He's not so bad,
is he?"
"He says some very remarkable things," said Guy, seriously. "Things
that seem true; but I never thought of them. Don't you suppose the
ghost was _there_, watching for him to act, often though he couldn't see
him?"
"Well, really," said Cuthbert; "I do think you have made a new remark on
Hamlet. I never heard that suggestion. We can go, you know, if you're
bored, any time."
"No," said Guy; "I like it."
Guy had the faculty of calling up distinct mental pictures. It was the
method by which he thought, and the moving scene stamped itself, as
plays sometimes will, both on his eyes and on his memory. When they
came out into the daylight he felt bewildered as if the world outside
was the unreal one.
"The ghost didn't do much good," he said; while Cuthbert, wishing he had
had more forethought, talked lightly and critically about the acting,
concerning which Guy was not critical at all.
When they set off on their night journey, Guy grew quiet, and presently
fell asleep. He looked tired, and the heavy eyelashes and the
wistfulness, which, in sleep, his mouth seemed to share, made him seem
younger than usual, and more in need of help. Suddenly he moved and
started, while a look of shrinking terror came into his face. Cuthbert
roused him, and he opened his eyes and caught his breath.
"Dreaming of the play?" said Cuthbert, lightly.
"No," said Guy. He leant back in his corner, and seemed slowly to
master himself, for presently he gave a little smile, and said, "I'm all
right, thank you."
Cuthbert thought that he could see exactly what the sort of thing was
now, and how it came about. Presently Guy began to talk about Hamlet,
asking many well-worn questions, and a few more unexpected ones.
Cuthbert, who had been working up all the criticisms for a set of
lectures, felt as he answered him rather like an orthodox, but
personally inexperienced professor of religion in the presence of an
earnest young inquirer.
After a little while, Guy said reflectively, "It is odd that he found it
so hard to obey the ghost, rather than to resist him. I don't much
think Shakespeare ever felt one himself."
This tone of calm consideration of the psychological truth of Hamlet
nearly made Cuthbert laugh, even while he was thinking of how to manage
the young visionary beside him. It was years since his easy life had
been invaded by so much anxiety for any one, years since he had had so
lively an interest.
Guy fished out the right volume of "Shakespeare" from among the books
that played propriety in a glass bookcase in the dining-room at Ingleby,
when he had finished his supper at two o'clock in the morning, and took
it upstairs with him.
On the next afternoon, perhaps happily to change the current of his
thoughts, they were engaged to Mrs Raby's garden party at Kirkton Hall,
a big house between Ingleby and Kirk Hinton, and the source of much of
the gaiety of the neighbourhood. On arriving, after the long drive,
they beheld Godfrey's flaxen head towering above the other tennis
players as he prepared to play a match with Miss Raby, who was the
champion lady-player of the district, against her brother and Constancy
Vyner, who turned to Guy with a cordial and friendly greeting. She
looked fresh and bright, and quite at her ease in Godfrey's presence.
Indeed, she had told her sister that she came on purpose to show that
she could "manage the situation." She had written Godfrey, instead of
Geoffrey of Monmouth, three times in her Modern History notes that
morning, and she spent much time in telling herself that she could never
return his feelings.
And now, with boy and girl defiance, and yet with instincts old as the
earth on which they stood, the one thing for which each of the pair
longed was to conquer the other.
The play in that notable set was discussed by tennis-lovers for all the
rest of the season, and the players never heeded the darkening of the
sky, and the increasing weight of the air. Cosy's hand was as steady
and her aim as direct as if no inner consciousness existed, she put into
her skilled play every atom of force that she possessed. As for
Godfrey, he was as mad as a Berserker, and he looked like one.
The game, owing to the equality of the players, was very long, and it
by-and-by became evident to Florella that Miss Raby was getting tired,
and was no longer playing at her best.
They were playing the last game of the set. "Thirty all" was called as,
without a moment's warning, down fell a torrent of thunder, rain, and
hail, enough to stop the most ardent players. Yet half a dozen more
strokes--Miss Raby stepped back, exclaimed, "Oh, what a pity; we must
declare the match drawn," and fled to the house, while Mr Raby snatched
up and held over her a lovely and useless white lace parasol.
Constancy and Godfrey stood opposite each other for a moment in the
drenching rain, both at once exclaiming, "Too bad!"
Then she laughed and scudded off with lifted skirt, while Godfrey felt a
sense of baffled anger which even defeat would not have brought to him.
Then he had to walk rationally back to the house, and change his things,
for the notes of a waltz suddenly sprang up. A big hall with a polished
floor was cleared for dancing, fruit and ice were being handed round,
and nobody cared very much for the thunderstorm.
Guy, looked out for the harebell blue gown, which he always associated
with Florella. It did not occur to him that she had very few smart
frocks at Moorhead. He asked her to dance, and it was not till they had
spun two or three times round the dark polished floor that his heart
began to throb and flutter, and that it struck him that this was
probably the sort of "exertion" forbidden to him. He felt miserable,
and wished, not for the first time, that he had never spoken of his
troubles. It was more endurable, locked up as it were in the cupboard
in the wall, than now when it mixed itself up with his ordinary life.
But the slight discomfort could not signify, the chief thing was to
conceal it. He would go on dancing, and presently get some champagne.
Florella, however, stopped of her own accord in the deep recess of a
window.
"I'm not a very good dancer," she said, in her composed way. "You know
I haven't been out very much yet."
"Don't you care for it?" said Guy, rather breathlessly.
"I like it a little," she said; "and it is lovely to watch, especially
on a dark floor--crumb-cloths have no beauty."
The light was streaming in under the storm-clouds through the narrow
windows in dull yellowish rays, the flying figures passed in and out of
the shadow, against a background of polished oak.
"I suppose," said Guy, "that you like painting better than dancing?"
"Oh, well," said Florella, in a tone that showed her to be Cosy's
sister; "to say that is either a truism or a very priggish remark. You
might as well ask if one liked strawberry ice best or poetry. But I
like looking on best of all--feeling pictures."
"Do tell me what you mean?" said Guy, eagerly.
Florella was always impelled to talk, or, perhaps more truly, to think
by Guy. She was drifting again into talk that belonged only to him, and
that she would not have held with any one else.
"I don't quite know what else to say," she answered. "It is not exactly
seeing things or noticing them. It is feeling the picture in them.
This dance has a picture in it. Often I don't feel so about things that
are very beautiful."
"Did you ever see Hamlet?" said Guy, apparently with an abrupt change of
subject.
"Oh yes, more than once. Have you seen the new Hamlet?"
"I saw it yesterday. I wish you'd tell me the meaning--what you see
inside that."
"Oh," said Florella, laughing. "That's what many people have tried to
see."
"I have read it all through to-day," said Guy, naively. "What puzzles
me is how, as the ghost was real, Hamlet had any doubt about him."
"Why, you see he thought that it might be an evil spirit taking his
father's shape."
"But if he had really _felt_ it, he must have known whether it was good
or evil. Seeing a ghost isn't like seeing a person outside you. Didn't
you know that the other day when you spoke of the only thing that could
have helped--Guy Waynflete?"
She flushed a deep crimson. There was something overwhelming to her in
the conversation, and she could hardly speak. "That came into my mind,"
she said. "I never thought of it before."
"But you believe it?"
"Yes."
The rain was ceasing, and the dusty, misty light grew clearer and more
radiant. The waltz finished in a glow of sunshine. Somehow the ghost
and his own condition went right out of Guy's head. He took Florella to
eat peaches, and began to talk to her in a more ordinary way, while the
strain of their previous intercourse lifted itself from her spirit.
They felt quite intimate and at home with each other, so much so that
Guy explained why he did not ask her to waltz again, quite simply and
without effort, admitting that he had been told to be careful. It
seemed quite natural to tell her what he had been unwilling to own to
himself.
He had hardly ever felt so happy, and when he was at ease, there was
something sweet and bright in his face and manner which had a great
charm.
Constancy, who paid him a gratifying amount of attention, told herself
many times that he was much more agreeable than his brother. Certainly
Godfrey looked neither sweet nor bright. He danced with Jeanie because
there was no occasion to make conversation for her, and glowered at
Constancy, and when Guy, certainly in rather an off-hand way, told him
of his visit to London, and of the doctor's opinion, he only looked
savage, and said--
"You don't seem as if there was much the matter with you to-day;" an
answer which Cuthbert thought brutal, but which did not strike Guy as at
all singular.
Godfrey had intended to say much to Guy about the advisability of coming
to Waynflete, and taking his place as the elder brother, but he was
unable to express it amiably, so his honourable scruples took the form
of remarking--
"I can't think why you're such a fool as to annoy Aunt Waynflete by
having Staunton with you. You ought to come over, and of course she
doesn't want to see him."
"I am not going to make myself absurd," said Guy, coldly. "What do I
care who Staunton's great-grandfather was? He has been very kind to
me."
"There's a great deal in bad blood," said Godfrey, obstinately. "It's
sure to come out. He'll come across you somehow."
"There's not much to choose between our great-grandfathers," said Guy.
"I'd just as soon have his as ours."
The agreeable little discussion was interrupted, and Guy only laughed as
Godfrey was called away.
But it might have been a different person who said suddenly to Staunton,
as they drove back to Ingleby in the moonlight--
"Cuthbert, the doctor thought I should get well, if I do take care,
didn't he?"
"Oh yes, certainly. But you mustn't play tricks with yourself."
"Well," said Guy, seriously and cheerfully, "I mean to try; and,
somehow, I think there's a chance for me, altogether."
Guy slept that night without dream or disturbance; but for Florella
there was no sleep for a long time. A whole rush of thoughts filled her
mind; of ghosts and demons, black spirits and white, bad and good
angels. She did not feel "creepy," or in any way personally concerned,
but she mentally realised, or, as she called it, "saw" all sorts of
eerie situations. Guy Waynflete--she did not try in her thoughts to
separate the generations--seemed to have been pursued by an evil power.
Was there no good angel to help him?
Florella saw--as she saw the thought in her pictures--the radiant image,
all light and wings and glory, the instinctive presentment of a heavenly
being which was her spiritual and artistic inheritance. Perhaps, in the
light of that fair fancy, she fell asleep; but suddenly there was no
outward vision any more, but a great awe and a passionate yearning
within. A voice seemed to cry from the depths, "Oh, helping is so
hard--so _hard_! There is no _angelness_ left. It takes it all. My
wings can't be smooth and tidy!" Florella woke right up in the morning
sunshine. The vision was over, but she did not forget it.